• Tuesday, September 15
• Doug Anderson
• UConn Co-op, 4:00 pm
• Co-Sponsored with the UConn Co-op

• Award-winning poet Doug Anderson highlights the vibrant history of his generation in his memoir Keep Your Head Down -a Farewell to Vietnam, the chaotic sixties, and their long aftermath. Publishers Weekly calls it a "beautifully told story, one of redemption, but also one without a happy ending." Anderson's first book of poems, The Moon Reflected Fire (1994), won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and his second, Blues for Unemployed Secret Police (2000), received a grant from the Eric Matthieu King Fund of the Academy of American Poets. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Massachusetts Review.

• Thursday, October 1
• Heidi Pitlor/Writers Who Edit, Editors Who Write
• UConn Co-op, 6:00 pm
• Sponsored by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation

Fiction writer and editor Heidi Pitlor will read from her work and discuss careers in editing. Pitlor is a former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, where she worked for ten years. Starting with the 2007 volume, she became the new series editor for The Best American Short Stories, working alongside celebrated authors such as Stephen King and Salman Rushdie. Her debut novel, The Birthdays, was published to wide critical acclaim in 2006. Publishers Weekly describes it as "rich in symbolism and a strong sense of place," while Boston Magazine notes that the novel "confronts some of the biggest questions of our daily lives... but refuses to rest on one single answer.

• October 5, 2009
• Long River Reading Series
• Student Union Lobby, 8pm

• Reprsesent & Resist! A special edition of Long River Live! Held in conjunction with the Metanoia Rally. Writers, artists, and performers whose work celebrates women and explores or resists violence against women and other forms of oppression will be featured. The event will include an open mic for everyone who wants to speak out and/or perform a piece of art related to this topic. If you are interested in performing or displaying your work at this event, please email Joe Welch immediately.

Wednesday, October 21
Stewart O'Nan/Aetna Writer-in-Residence
Konover Auditorium, 7:00 pm
Co-sponsored with the Aetna Chair of Writing

Stewart O'Nan is not afraid to explore the harsh realities of life. He is the author of over fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including, Snow Angels (1994), named a "notable book of the year" by the American Library Association; A Prayer for the Dying 1999), selected as a "notable book of the year" by the New York Times; Wish You Were Here (2002), the winner of Connecticut Book Award; The Good Wife (2006), for which he received The Martin Luther King Drum Major for Freedom Award; Last Night at the Lobster; a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, and Songs for the Missing (2008). O'Nan, who was named by Granta as one of its Twenty Best Young American Novelists, has created an unforgettable array of characters struggling against tragedy and hardships. Writing for the L.A. Times, Susan Salter Reynolds praises O'Nan for his "unforgettable rendition of working folks, his respect for his characters, his clean lines and elegant accumulation of detail, his mastery of vernacular and his rueful combination of horror and comedy."

• Monday, October 26
• Geraldine Mills
• UConn Co-op, 6:30 pm
• Co-sponsored with the Connecticut Writing Project, Irish Studies, and the Aetna Chair in Writing

Irish novelist and poet Geraldine Mills is the author of two published collections of short fiction, Lick of the Lizard (2005) and The Weight of Feathers (2007), and four collections of poetry, including Unearthing Your Own (2001) and Toil the Dark Harvest (2004). Her writing has won the OKI Award, the Moore Medallion, the North Tipperary Award, the South Tipperary Award, the Aspire Short Story Competition, and 2007 Kavanagh Fellowship. She was named the Millennium winner of the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune New Irish Writer Award.

• Wednesday, October 28, Stern Lounge (CLAS 217)
• Long River Reading Series

A special, spooky, Halloween-themed edition of Long River Live! Writers, artists, performers with scary, ghostly, or creepy work needed for featured performer slots and the open mic. Email Joe Welch if you dare.

• Tuesday, November 3
• Sharon Bryan,
• UConn Co-op, 6:00 pm
• Co-sponsored with the UConn Co-op

Sharon Bryan is the author of four collections of poems, including Salt Air, Objects of Affection, and Flying Blind. Her most recent book, Sharp Stars (2009), is the winner of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. The publisher, BOA Editions, describes Bryan's poems as "tightly-knit"; and "succulent"; and praises her "acrobatic language that probes matters philosophical and psychological. Bryan's awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and The Discovery Award from The Nation. She is the editor of Where We Stand: Women Poets on Literary Tradition, and the co-editor, with William Olsen, of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life.

• Monday, November 9, 7 pm, Stern Lounge (CLAS 217)
  
• Long River Reading Series

Featuring music by Matt Comeau, open mic, and more. Please join us and bring some of your own work to share.

• Thursday, November 12
• Allegra Goodman
• Konover Auditorium, 7:00 pm
• Co-sponsored with The Rightors Fund

• Named by the New Yorker one of the twenty best writers under forty, Allegra Goodman is the author of six books, including the highly regarded The Family Markowitz (1996), about an endearing three-generational Jewish family; Kaaterskill Falls (1998), about a mostly Orthodox Jewish summer community in upstate New York; Paradise Park (2001); Intuition(2006); and her latest work, The Other Side of the Island (2008), in which she makes her first foray into the world of young adult literature. The LA Times calls it, "a dark vision rendered in wonderful and imaginative detail and notes that with global warming, carbon footprints and the corporatization of government dominating headlines, Goodman's story is timely and disturbing." Goodman will read from The Other Side of the Island and discuss the unique challenges of writing for young adult audiences.

• Wednesday, November 18
• Writing for the Puppet Stage: Discussion & Workshop
• Class of 1947 Room, Homer Babbidge Library
• Pizza served!
• Co-sponsored by UConn's Ballard Institute & museum of Puppetry, the Humanities Institute, the Drama & Theater Interest Group (DATIG), and the Creative Writing Program
• Panelists: Dr. John Bell, Director, Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry
• Dr. Dassia Posner, Department of Dramatic Arts, UConn
• Professor Bart Roccoberton, Director of UConn Puppet Arts Program
• Our esteemed panelists will open the event by sharing their experiences creating works for and about the puppet stage. After a break for Dinner, they'll lead workshops organized aropund different possibilities for involvement in projects for the puppet stage. Workshop sessions will include: "Playwriting for the puppet stage," "Dramaturgy for the puppet stage," and "Puppetry Research & Scholarship." All are welcome! No experience with puppetry required! For More information, including workshop descriptions, see: 860-486-0339 bimp@uconn.edu